Category Archives: Steven Erikson

The Malazan Book of the Fallen journey comes to an end. The journey was fraught with extreme highs and lows throughout the reading. I feel like I crossed 4 different deserts myself but I also feel like I was a part of the Bridgeburners or Bonehunters. So, in the end, what did I really think of it? I think it is a monumental piece of fantasy literature that will stand the test of time and Steven Erikson is one of the best all around writers in any genre. I can think that but I also come to understand that it might be one of the most overhyped series available even though it is good. The fans of Malazan almost treat the series like a religious tome of perfection but it must be treated as just another epic fantasy series. There are many readers that don’t like Malazan Book of the Fallen and that is perfectly fine because it isn’t perfect.

Anyways, The Crippled God, like all the other books, gives us amazing scenes of gods and ascendant beings getting involved with the group of armies we have come to follow throughout the series. Everything is pointing to the final convergence of characters and what happens is truly an epic battle with variables that were cast throughout the entire series coming into play. Do we get all the answers we wanted? For the most part, yes, but there is a reason a lot of people reread this series to get more clarity, and a lot of this series is up to interpretation. There are definitely moments in the ending where I could look back and see how it connected to various other parts of the story but I think this had more to do with Erikson’s writing style than a huge outline where everything tied together perfectly. Throughout the series, Erikson left holes open on purpose during the narrative. These holes were then later filled in by later books but I really felt it was more about the narrative steering the story than Erikson. In other words, even though he did plan a lot out, I think he was making some things up as he went along, and it worked out because of his tendency to not give answers. This is not a criticism of the story, in fact, I don’t think there are many fantasy writers that could create this intricate and deep of a world, and pull it out.

Do I recommend this series? Absolutely. It is in my top 3 favorite series of all time, right behind The Realm of the Elderlings and Wheel of Time. It is overwhelmingly complex and deep but extremely rewarding. I do think that fantasy readers that haven’t or don’t read really long series might want to really think if they want to start this series or not. Also, I would recommend reading at least Deadhouse Gates before quitting the series. If you absolutely disliked The Gardens of the Moon, don’t even bother with the series. The series does get very philosophical and wordy later on.

I read this series off and on for 2 years, reading about 5 of the books each year. The reason I decided to chose this route of reading is because it would have bogged down my reading during the year way too much if I tried to read them back to back. The majority of the time each book took me about 3 weeks to finish and after I was finished each one I was exhausted from reading it. Other people might be able to power through this whole series in a short period of time but I was not one of them.

Thanks for reading this review and if I ever reread the series, I’m definitely going to read the ICE books along with these.

9 down 1 to go, but this book was the weakest installment in the series. For the most part, I have loved Malazan Book of the Fallen. I have been onboard with the series from the very beginning and even though each book was written in the same way I always thought that as the series ended things would get tighter. Well, it seems I was wrong. Dust of Dreams once again introduces the reader to a slew of new characters and story lines that intersect with the characters we have grown to love. I feel that Erikson and Esslemont wanted to create stories that were true to real life, where people dip in and out of other’s lives, and our “stories” aren’t as nice and neat as fiction. Along with that, creating a world that is constantly at flux and interacting with itself. In some fantasy, the outside individuals to a party are basically in a state of unchanging while the party does everything. This is not the case with Malazan, everything is twisting and turning together. This creates dynamic, intriguing stories, with a sense that anything can happen at any moment but when you are 9 books in, I want to at least see some natural progression towards an ending point.

The reason I didn’t like Dust of Dreams as much as the other books is because this could have been 600 pages shorter because the amount of actual story progression took up maybe 400 pages. Other books like Reaper’s Gale and Toll the Hounds felt overly long but they never felt pointless. A large portion of Dust of Dreams feels pointless. Everything not related to the Malazan army, besides some of Tool’s story, was not needed. Supposedly, Dust of Dreams and The Crippled God is one large book. Dust of Dreams is basically volume one of the final book. This means that we basically get a 1,000 page book that reads like the first two sections of all the other books. If you aren’t a Malazan reader, those first two sections are usually building the groundwork for an interesting and more action-oriented 3rd and 4th sections. Because this is basically a 2,000 page book split in half, Dust of Dreams just doesn’t feel right.

Yes, Erikson gives the reader a warning right at the beginning of Dust of Dreams, telling us what we are to expect, but I’m still surprised that this was the choice made. All along I have had faith in Erikson to give me an ending to this series that was satisfactory but for the first time, I am a bit worried that it will all fall flat for me. That doesn’t take away from the brilliance that are some of the previous books that I loved but I am so used to epic fantasy ramping up the quality as series go on but I have seen a decline in this series since Reaper’s Gale. Toll the Hounds was fantastic but there was a lot of philosophical bloating in that story. With Dust of Dreams though is the first time I thought a lot of things just weren’t needed.

I really didn’t want to give this book a 2 star rating but I had to because it just didn’t work for me. There are some excellent scenes and probably after I finish the whole series it’ll all blend together into one epic story anyways, but right now Dust of Dreams was a disappointment.

Highlights:
The eighth Malazan book brings readers back to Darujhistan, a setting we haven’t been since Gardens of the Moon. We see how our retired Bridgeburners are doing while running a local tavern built upon the temple of K’rul. The ship with Cutter, Spite, Pust, Barathol, Scillara, and Mappo arrive in the Darujhistan harbor. On the way to the city, we have Karsa, Samar, and Traveller joining together along with the Hounds of Shadow. Also, Kallor is heading towards Darujhistan as well. One of the largest conversions in the series of powerful characters heading to the same city creates a great sense of tension and an amazing payoff near the end of the book.

Also, we have a group of Tiste Andii traveling towards Black Coral to meet up with the other Tiste Andii living there, including Andomander Rake. The group, led by Clip, have many different reasons for visiting the Tiste Andii lord. Nimander is an unwilling leader for this group of Tiste Andii and he is fighting his destiny.

We get a lot of backstory in this story with the Tiste Andii but their side story takes second place to the convergence happening in Darujhistan. Bad things happen to our Bridgeburners and some of the plans that many of the gods have been cooking up come to a head in this book. What I find interesting was how characters that didn’t know each other end up becoming good friends because they are like individuals, all survivors. Power attracts power in this 8th Malazan book.

My largest complaint about this book is that some of the characters feel like archetypes of philosophical worldviews. This is one of the issues I have with Malazan. The large powerful gods are more about ideas than an actual character. Yes, having these characters representing worldviews creates amazing writing and passages, but this book takes it a little too far. As much as I love this series, the books can be a slog, and they are always better after I finish them than during the actual reading. The more philosophy in the books, the more it slows down. Still, the reveals and consequences at the end of this book are so epic that I can’t help but love the book.

Highlights:
I really like Erikson’s ability to add new characters within the Malazan army’s different squads and make me care about their characters. I loved the Ruin party story-arc and the Rhulad story-arc. The Malazans were the highlight of the story and the additional characters in the Malazan squads made me laugh, get angry, and be sad.

I really didn’t like the abuse depicted in this book with Tanal and Janeth. It was unneeded and really didn’t add much to the story. There were also too many references to child abuse too. Almost all of the Liberty Consign individuals were awful and uninteresting people. For the most part, I felt that the conflict in the east between the Letherii and Awl was pointless and unneeded. There were a lot of point of views that could have been cut. A long stretch of this book has nothing really happening. The weakest Malazan book so far and a drop in the quality of writing in my opinion.

Update: After finishing this book in May, I can’t stop thinking about the scenes in this book. Upgrading this to a 5 star read. One of my favorite Malazan books now.

In May 2016, I wanted to take a small break from reading many things to just read one thing rather relaxed and that was The Bonehunters. In fact, this was the only book I finished in May(along with some graphic novels). The Bonehunters is a monster of a book and depending on the edition is about 1,000 pages. Coming in at 365,000 words it is no wonder it took me the whole month to read. These chunky fantasy books are where my heart is though and this book was fantastic.

The Bonehunters continues the epic fantasy series by Erikson where the reader needs to work to figure some things out. This book amps up the tension between the different gods and the different mortals. A large theme of this book is whether the gods control the mortals or the mortal’s actions control the god’s. This sixth book in the series brings a lot of the previous plot threads together and intertwines them. This creates a book that really feels completely different than the other books and a visible sign of where the series is heading.

Of all the talk about Erikson’s world building, I think that it is his writing ability that impressed me the most in this book. There are so many points in this book where characters are talking about philosophical and theoretical ideas and Erikson is able to deliver these ideas better than most people in academia. The more I read these books the more I am impressed with just the raw intelligence that Erikson possesses. These are just super smart and high-level thinking books.

Sometimes I get uncomfortable with all the platitudes that Erikson receives so I want to make sure to mention something where I think he really messed up in this book. Many times Erikson hides the details from the reader but it is believable within the scene. Most of the time the reader isn’t cognizant of Erikson pulling the strings on the plot but in The Bonehunters there were moments where it was clearly obvious Erikson purposely kept information from the reader. The biggest example is a scene in which two characters are having a conversation. There is no reason for the author to not cover what the two characters have discussed as their deal with each other but he leaves that part out. I was rather annoyed at this scene and I think it was a slight towards the reader.

The Bonehunters has a very odd structure as well. Like all of his books it is split into 4 different sections. Usually, there is a steady increase of pacing and story as the book progresses through these 4 sections. In The Bonehunters we get a very climatic scene in the second part of the story and then it almost feels like the book reboots itself. Regardless, the climatic scene in the second part of the story is one of my favorites in the series and the ending scene location is fabulous as well. I just think that the ramping up of the story was a little odd in this one.

I just really like these books. They are so imaginative, mysterious, and full of amazing scenes. I’m a little hesitant about Reaper’s Gale because I’ve heard that pacing in that is a little slow. I’m hoping I can power through, though. I think Malazan is one of those series where you compare scenes instead of comparing the different books and this one really had some fantastic scenes in it that are in my top 5. So close to a 5 rating but the string pulling by Erikson brought it down some.

Midnight Tides by Steven Erikson is the story of the Tisti Edur and the Letherii civilization, on a continent separated from everyone else that were in books 1-4. If there was confusion before Midnight Tides, there is none now, Erikson is creating a global epic fantasy story. Where a lot of epic fantasy focuses on one particular continent, Erikson has one large world. Midnight Tides might just be my favorite Malazan Book of the Fallen book yet.

More than likely if you are reading this review, you have read this book, or you are about to read this book. The longer in a series you review, the less likely people that have never read any books in the series will read a review. So I am going to skip the part of telling you what to expect from a Steven Erikson Malazan book.

Midnight Tides is a story about two opposing civilizations and two sets of brothers, one on each side. The Sengar brothers are from the Tiste Edur, a more tribal and hunting civilization. These brothers are a part of a family that has some power and they are sent on a mission by a warlord king to bring back a mysterious sword of power to the tribe. The Beddict brothers are from Letherii but each brother thinks about the Letherii civilization differently. A meeting between the two civilizations might be the last peaceful meeting that these two civilizations will ever have and when the gods are involved, who knows what can happen.

The Letherii civilization is purposefully a civilization very similar to the United States in their foreign affairs and capitalism. Erikson is 100% making a comment on the the involvement of the United States in foreign countries. This is not subtle at all and in other books this would have annoyed me but Erikson does it with so much intelligence and imagination that it is fantastically done. It becomes such a strong part of the story that you end up forgetting the social commentary aspect of it but it is always underneath everything.

The strongest aspect of this book is that Erikson builds up to these momentous moments. All the dialogue, complicated world-building, and host of characters is dedicated to the last quarter of this book. Everything is pointing towards this eventual clash between these two civilizations and the taking of the Letherii capital but with all these plot threads with gods and immortals happening within the city itself too. It is just so well done because we get into the minds of the ideology of the individuals involved but also the ideology of the people around them. When an important moment happens that challenges the way these characters see this world they must make a life altering decision in the midst of a battle. These moments of choices by the characters hit so hard for me. When everything that Erikson has built are for these singular moments of absolute perfection, it just blows my mind. This is why I read epic fantasy.

It took me about 200 pages into this book for all the characters and what was happening to snap into place. After that it wasn’t difficult to understand and I found it really readable. This is just a fantastic entry into the Malazan Book of the Fallen series and I cannot wait to read the next books and see how Erikson ties these characters into the already established characters.

One of few perfect score books.

5/5 25/25 Possible Score

Plot – 5(Very Strong)

Characters – 5(Very Strong)

World Building/Setting – 5(Very Strong)

Writing Style – 5(Very Strong)

Heart & Mind Aspect – 5(Very Strong)

Progress

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March Habits:
20 mins of exercise a day
1 hour of reading nonfiction a day
A day failed = $10 donated to the library
Successfully go the whole month = 1 new book buy.